Watch Out For Her With Him
by TerraBeth
Summary: Littlefinger cares for Sansa more than he should, considering the game he's trying to play.
1. In Which Shae Plays Matchmaker

_- watch -_

Shae watches. She watches Sansa sleep, sleep until late in the afternoon, until the sunlight pours through the windows, orange as marmalade. She watches her eat, eat in spite of her lack of appetite, fight against her rising gorge to swallow. She watches her at her needlework, holding the hoop in her lap and the needle in her hand, stitching X after X in ruby, crimson, vermilion. The colours spread across the muslin like billows of blood, like all of the thoughts she dares not speak out loud, even to Shae herself.

Long ago, Sansa stitched ladies on balconies, tossing their silken scarves at knights at tourney below. Not any longer.

"Shall I braid your hair, milady?" Shae asks her one day.

"What's the point?" Sansa wants to know.

"To look pretty?"

"Pretty?" Shae has never heard the word spoken so coldly before. "For whom?"

Shae chooses a different line. "Do you wish to take a walk today?"

"I'd rather not," Sansa answers. She has grown chary of appearing in public since King Joffrey announced his engagement to Margaery Tyrell.

Shae understands. She also dreads the day when the king remembers there is still a Stark in King's Landing.

"You can wear a veil," she says, undeterred. "We can walk along the pier. Look at the sea, the ships in the harbor. Something that is not this chamber. These four walls. Each other."

"If you've grown tired of me, you may leave," Sansa says in a voice that would be imperious, if it weren't trembling.

Shae crosses the room. Squats before Sansa, clasps her hands in her own. "I will never leave you, milady."

This earns her a weak smile.

"Come," Shae says in her most charming voice, pulling Sansa upwards by the hands. "Let's go stroll in the sunlight."

_- watch out for her -_

Shae takes Sansa by the arm, helps her sidestep pools of stagnant water, potholes in the cobblestones. She guides her through the city alleyways, far from any courtiers who might recognize her through the scalloped veil she wears over her face. She leads her away from soldiers who stare at them with hard eyes, away from the street vendors roasting animals spitted on sticks, out of reach of the pickpockets and beggars and crones.

A minstrel straddling a bench drunkenly pitches and sings:

_In the city King's Landing the morning breaks bright._

_Out the taverns come gold-cloaks and whore-sons and knights._

_On the top of the dung-heap, a cockerel's crowing._

_Through the slum of Flea-bottom, a putrid wind's blowing_

_Up to the palace, where eight days a week_

_Spies and backbiters and liars and thieves_

_Swarm about, thicker than bees in a hive_

'_Round the king, the king's nobles, the noblemen's wives._

_Crooks, whores and scoundrels! Nothing you do_

_Might rival the mischief these men plot to do._

_Raise a glass to the minstrel! Go on, chew your bread,_

_Drink your wine, sing your songs, for we'll all soon be dead._

"At least the commoners' spirits are high," Sansa says under her breath, as the small crowd around the minstrel jeers.

Shae does not answer. She knows that women like herself thrive in corrupted cities like King's Landing, grow fat like ticks on its underbelly.

Girls like Sansa die of broken hearts, or bitterness.

_- watch out for her with him -_

Shae looks down the pier to where Sansa stands at Petyr Baelish's side. The sound of the sea washes over their words; they face the water as they speak.

It is well done. There are many in King's Landing with the gift of lip-reading.

"He makes her nervous," Shae offers, noting how stiffly Sansa holds her spine.

"He ought to."

"Should I fear for her maidenhead?"

Ros laughs. "If only his desires were so innocent."

Shae turns and looks at her, an unspoken question in her eyes.

Ros explains. "When Lord Baelish looks upon a woman, he has but one thought, and it has nothing to do with what lies between her legs. No, he's thinking of how he might use her to his own advantage. And the advantage of Lord Baelish is little consolation to the pieces he imperils on his chessboard."

"They say he loved her mother."

Ros raises her eyebrows, acknowledging this as true. "He still bears the scar from the duel he fought for her, and lost," she says. "I saw it once, when he was in his dressing chamber. It's a wonder that he lived."

"Might he bear my lady some affection for her mother's sake?"

"Perhaps," Ros says, unconvinced. "But I wouldn't bet on it, if I were you."

Shae turns her face to the sea.

"I never bet on anything," she lies.

_- watch out -_

"What are you doing here?" Tyrion hisses through the metal grate in his door. "Have you gone mad?"

"Are you going to let me in or what?" Shae asks, cocking a hand on her hip.

Tyrion breathes out through his nose, exasperated, and disappears from the grate. A moment later, the thick wooden door opens, and he jerks her inside.

"I cannot believe you. The Hound is gone, which means that there are precisely two people in King's Landing who stand between Sansa Stark and those who would just as soon kill her as look at her."

"She is sleeping. The door to her chamber is locked." Shae looks at him searchingly. "You care for her," she realizes.

"Don't be absurd," Tyrion says, scowling, over-enunciating the sibilant S.

"I am not the one who's being absurd. Admit it. You care for her."

"Because I would not see her dead, or maimed, or raped?" He snorts. "Your idea of 'care' is, quite honestly, _fucked_."

"I did not know my lord had such a tender heart," she teases him, and lays her hand on his chest through the neck of his shirt.

"And now you are the only one who does," Tyrion says, his voice gruff, but slightly less querulous. "Guard my secret well."

"I guard all your secrets well, my lord." She bends down and kisses him.

He kisses her back, then breaks away.

"You should not have come," he says. Both chastising and forgiving her at once.

"Then why did you let me in?"

He shrugs. "A man does foolish things for love."

He lets his eyes linger on her face a moment longer, then pulls himself away from her. Crosses the room to pour himself a flagon of wine.

"When I was a boy, I used to creep down to the castle's kitchens and trip all the mousetraps at night," he says, and raises the cup to his lips. "Because I could not bear to see the little mice with their backs broken."

Shae sits down on the edge of the bed. "Are you saying my lady Sansa's a mouse?"

"In a den of hungry cats."

"Then send her away from here." Her voice is harder now.

"How?" Tyrion demands. "I am the Hand of the King no longer. I have neither the power nor the authority to spirit her out of the city. I can barely afford to pay Bronn to keep my own head on my neck!"

"You know she cannot stay."

He shakes his head. "I cannot help her."

Shae just looks at him and doesn't say a word.

"If I were caught, I would be executed for treason. And the only Lannister who'd deign to visit my grave lies in chains up North." He pauses. "I admit it - I care more for my life than my conscience."

"'_In the game of thrones, you win or you die_,'" Shae repeats. She has heard him say it many times since the Battle of Blackwater.

Tyrion toasts to this, his expression grim as ever. "And my odds at winning grow slimmer each day."

"Maybe we should change the game," she says.

"To what?"

Her eyes are thoughtful. "One where everyone wins."

_- for her -_

Shae and Sansa are sitting on her window seat, their legs tucked underneath them, their bodies cradled by silken cushions. Their laughter rings out in the chamber like choral music – Shae's the earthy contralto; Sansa, the sweet soprano.

"It does give you a lovely warm feeling," Sansa admits as she holds out her cup for more of the rose-colored wine.

"I told you," Shae says merrily, refilling Sansa's goblet. "Two or three glasses won't make you a fat old drunk like the dead king."

"Or a cruel one, like Queen Cersei." Sansa seems suddenly soberer. "I would have made a good queen," she says after a pause. "And a kind."

"Even with Joffrey as your king?"

The girl loses all expression at the mention of this name. "Let us not speak of Joffrey," she decides.

"Fine with me." Shae shifts her position, props her head up with her hand. "Tell me of the newest man to delight your eyes."

Sansa laughs - carefully, demurely. "I don't know."

"I think you do," Shae says, playfully nudging her.

"Well. I did find Ser Loras quite handsome. You know…the Knight of the Flowers?" Her mouth twists. "But he is a cheat at tourney, and inconstant in his fealty. And they say he cares not for women, anyhow."

"And what of Petyr Baelish?

Sansa looks up, startled.

"Do you like him?" Shae persists.

Sansa is quiet for a long moment. "He frightens me, a little," she says at last. "My heart knocks against my chest when I must speak to him."

Shae smiles. "So you _do_ like him."

"_Shae!" _she protests. _"_He's old enough to be my father."

"He has the body of a much younger man," Shae says.

When Sansa's cheeks flush, she laughs.

"You're awful," Sansa says through an abashed smile. "The absolute worst."

"And he is knowing in the ways of love," Shae continues in a breathy, sing-song voice. "I hear the women in his brothels are the best lovers in the Seven Kingdoms, that he taught them how to fulfill any man's desires."

She gives Sansa's thigh a playful squeeze, and Sansa squeals and giggles and pulls it away.

"And he fascinates you," Shae finishes.

"Only because he's not a hypocrite. All other men in King's Landing are either hypocrites or brutes." Sansa pauses, as though she's mulling over a secret. "But he is not to be trusted," she says, as though she's made a firm decision. "He told me so himself."

"They do say he's a dangerous man," Shae says, knowing this is hardly a disincentive to lust.

Sansa twists a braid of her hair in her hand. It is the gesture of a girl struggling against her own ambivalence.

Shae's eyes narrow thoughtfully. "I know a game we can play," she says, setting down her glass.

She reaches out and trails a finger down the center of Sansa's bodice.

"Pretend I'm him," she says, a wild gleam in her eyes.

Sansa grins. "You're mad," she says.

"You want to know if you like him or not? This is the best way. Close your eyes, think of him and see how it makes you feel." Shae rises. "I'll put out the candle."

The candle flame expires with a _hiss_ between her moistened fingertips.

"But I don't know what to do," Sansa whispers, flummoxed, as she leans back and Shae leans forward. "Where do I put my hands?"

"Here." Shae guides them to her shoulders, strokes Sansa's face and hair. "Remember what I said. Think of him."

Sansa does. And in the darkness, she yields again and again to Petyr Baelish's mouth upon her neck. His hands, sliding up her thighs.

Afterwards, they lie on Sansa's bed. Side by side, holding hands, their fingers intertwined.

"I know you want him to take you away," Shae whispers into the darkness.

"Do you think he will?" Sansa's voice is small, but not lacking in hope.

"Men have done far more foolish things for love."

There is a silence as Sansa considers her words.

"But I do not think Lord Baelish loves me," she finally says, as though this is something she should apologize for.

"He nearly died for the love of your mother long ago, and she cannot have been more beautiful in her youth than you are now." Shae pauses. "And there is something else that I daresay might move him to love you the more."

"What?"

"You _need_ him."

Sansa is silent again.

"Men like it when you need them," Shae explains.

"I know that already," Sansa says in a way that makes Shae doubt she does.

"And you _like_ him," Shae says. "It's enough to _like_ him."

"But…I don't know if it's the kind of _like_ that turns to love."

"Just pretend you do. Sometimes, love comes after."

"Did that ever happen to you?"

Shae thinks of her Tyrion, and smiles.

_- with him -_

After two days of waiting, Shae catches sight of Baelish's silhouette in the castle corridors. She slows her steps to catch him at the crossing.

"Lord Baelish," she greets him, and curtseys with a straight back, as Queen Cersei mock-taught her during the Battle of Blackwater.

Baelish stops, scrutinizes her face. "You're the Stark girl's handmaiden, aren't you? I don't believe I caught your name."

"Shae."

"Shae." He draws out the name, caresses it in his rounded mouth. "How pretty. It's…?"

"Foreign."

"Yet oddly familiar to me," Baelish finishes, with a look she isn't sure she likes. He smiles and gives her a perfunctory nod, and makes a motion to walk around her.

Shae opens her mouth as though she would say something of great importance, and falters, as though she is lacking in nerve. A performance she has practiced countless times in Sansa's looking-glass over the last two days.

Littlefinger, sensing weakness, lingers.

"Say what you will," he says, not unkindly.

Shae hesitates. "I do not know what you spoke of with my lady, my lord, and I do not need to know. But…since she saw you last…"

She drops her voice. "She dreams of you at night, my lord. She calls out your name in her sleep."

All the while she speaks, she is searching his face, searching for a sign that his heart might quicken at the thought of her young mistress, yearning for a man's touch in the darkness.

Baelish stares at her a full five seconds before he remembers himself.

"Why are you telling me this?" he whispers, and glances down the corridors. There is accusation in his voice, and a hint of fear. But it is too late. She has seen his face. Seen the hope in his eyes.

"I want my lady to sing again," she says. "But you know what they say about little birds in cages..."

Voices echo towards them down the corridor. Shae curtseys again to Baelish before she hurries back the way that she came.

_- watch -_

"Shae."

She looks up from the granate-apples in the fruitier's stand before her. Yellowjackets buzz around them, attracted by the sweet nectar oozing from their pores.

It is Ros, her face tentative. "Shae…_is_ your name?" she asks, squinting in the brightness of the sun.

Shae bends an inch at the knees.

Ros smiles without showing her teeth. "The sweetest granate-apples are down Grocer's Way," she confides, and takes her by the arm. "Shall we go there together?"

As they walk along the parapets, Ros leans in close and says, "These past three nights my lord wakes till dawn. Shuffling through the codices of the coin of the realm. Making music with his abaci.

"I asked him, 'What are you figuring, my lord?' He said, 'My worth in King's Landing.' I asked what that was. Do you know what he answered?"

Shae glances at her sideways. Waits.

"More than the Lannisters can afford to lose,'" Ros recites.

"Why are you telling me this?" Shae says, feigning impatience.

"I want to know what gamble he's about to take."

"I know nothing of your lord's intentions."

"Don't you?" Ros drops her arm when they reach the first gate of the Hanging Gardens. "He wants to see her again. Bring her here tomorrow before sunset, and send her to stroll through the gardens."

"Alone?"

"Alone," Ros confirms. "She may wish to wear a veil. And pack a reticule."

Shae nods and turns to leave.

"And Shae."

She looks back over her shoulder.

"If you should suddenly find yourself without friends in King's Landing, don't you dare come running to me."

_- out for her -_

Over the harbor, the sky bleeds orange and red. It is the next day, nigh to sunset, and Sansa is pacing round her chamber in a panic.

"If they catch me, they'll cut off my head!" she cries, wringing her hands.

"They will not catch you." Shae's voice is adamant. "Lord Baelish holds King's Landing in the palm of his hand. Anyone who sees you will forget that he has seen you. Anyone who speaks of you will have his tongue cut from his throat."

"The _Lannisters_ hold King's Landing, you idiot," Sansa babbles. Bringing her hands to her face, she collapses onto the window seat.

"They rule in _name_," Shae tells her. "But all the middlemen between the palace and pier belong to him. The City Watch is his. The Lords of Custom are his. The Port-Masters are his. And they will gladly look the other way when his ship sails you from this gods-forsaken place."

She plucks Sansa's hands away from Sansa's face. "Don't you _want_ to go home, my lady?" she pleads.

"Of course I do," Sansa sputters. Her eyes are shining with tears. "I just…I can't believe he would take such a risk. For _me_."

She looks up at Shae. "Do you think he means to betray me?"

It is not a stupid question. But Shae cannot allow such speculations now.

"Now is not the time to be afraid," she snaps.

"But I _am_ afraid," Sansa sobs.

Shae lifts Sansa's chin with her hand, looks her in the eyes. "Stop. You are a Stark of Winterfell, not a chamber maid."

Sansa stops crying.

"My father was a Stark," she says, holding the other woman's gaze. "And he was the bravest of men, and they cut off his head, and he died." Her eyelashes are still wet with tears. "What if we're making a mistake?"

Shae swallows. "It may well be," she admits. "But staying here is too dangerous. And who knows when you may have another chance to flee?"

There is silence in the room, a silence that is broken when Sansa lets out a sharp sigh. It is the sound of a girl yielding to an ineluctable truth.

"You're right," she finally says. "I have to try, don't I?"

Shae wishes she could clasp her in her arms. Instead she pulls her by the hands to her feet.

"Pack your bag, Sansa," she says. "We must be gone."

Sansa packs only one keepsake. A doll.

_- with him -_

One of the Targaryens planted the Hanging Gardens centuries ago, in the southern-most quarter of King's Landing, where the sun battens the earth over the sea. Until there came a king who cared more for hunting than horticulture, it was one of the most beautiful places in Westeros. But Robert Baratheon let the Hanging Gardens go. Now, vines snake upwards, and strangle their wooden supports; overripe fruit rots on the ground. Its paths are crisscross with brambles, and its many secret passageways forgotten.

In the gardens' westward keeping, underneath a bower where fluted flowers hang low, Lord Petyr Baelish paces to and fro, and frets.

Once, long ago, a woman from across the Shining Sea told him that he meddled in black arts by renting out the bodies of women, for love was a blood magick, the most potent thereof.

He wasn't sure what she had meant, till now. For the girl had crept into his blood and spread through his veins like poison. Now, every time his heart beats, it beats out her name. S_an-sa. San-sa. San-sa._

Was he a fool to believe the words of Tyrion Lannister's whore? Probably. Did that disincline him to this reckless plan? Not in the slightest.

There! There she is. He can see her through the knotted, nesting vines. He sweeps them aside with his hand – he'd cut a curtain through them, earlier – and holds out his hand.

"My lady," he says, trying not to sound too eager. "Come."

_- watch -_

Shae lingers by the parapets, pretends to watch the setting sun. Swallows past the thorn that is lodged in her throat.

She longs to run into the Hanging Gardens, to call Sansa back. But another part of her simply wants her _gone_, gone from King's Landing, no matter the devils' pact to which she must sign her name.

She will not run after her, she decides. She will let her go with Littlefinger. He is powerful, and sly, and he will keep her safe.

Unless there is a profit in the opposite…

No! She will go after Sansa. She must make sure that she's done the right thing.

Feet pounding the cobblestones, arms pumping, heart racing, Shae runs.

_- out -_

"Won't a ship leaving at sunset be suspect, my lord?" Sansa asks, all wide eyes and innocence.

"It would be, my lady," Baelish tells her, smiling at her cleverness. "If the men of the piers had not been informed that my brothels were open to them all evening, and without charge."

He beckons for her hand, and she gives it him.

"And - " he begins.

He leads her towards the far corner of the bower, pulls the vinery free. There is a passage the width of a strong man's shoulders, and beneath it, a staircase cut into the rock, descending, invisible from the sea.

It is so cunning, it seems almost magical.

Baelish points downwards. Scarce a half-league hence, a fine, jaunty vessel sails towards them.

"There's a crag beneath that's a natural harbor," he explains, and turns his face to Sansa. She is so close he can feel the warmth from her face and neck. "In the golden hour, when the sun sinks beneath the horizon and its light still lingers, we'll steal down onto the ship, and be away."

"It's perfect," Sansa whispers, and looks up at him. "My lord – I don't – "

"You don't have to thank me," he assures her, and lets the curtain of vines drop. And jasmine blossoms float down from the bower overhead, to fall and catch in Sansa's auburn hair.

"I must," she insists, as strongly as courtesy allows. "For – I know well that my lord can bear me no affection…" (she hesitates) "…that could possibly warrant the risk."

Roselight is stealing through the bowery, illuming her eyes and lips and cheeks. And Baelish is powerless as he looks on her face - so beautiful, so familiar, yet so strange.

"No," he says, and "_Yes_," the second afterwards, and reaches for her waist, and pulls her body into his.

It is the sort of kiss that maidens dream of, alone in their chambers at night, sitting by their windows, gazing out towards a horizon that remains forever out of reach. That Sansa still dreams of, in unguarded moments, when she allows herself to hope for a life that is neither terrible nor boring.

The man who kisses her is not a knight or prince or king, but his arms are strong and his hold on her is sure. She half-swoons. Her body bends in his arms like a reed.

He breaks away, and, as soon as her feet are again on the ground, he reaches up to touch her face with both his hands. He traces his fingertips down her cheeks.

She looks at him, rapt.

"Sansa. Would you trust yourself to me?" he asks.

"Yes," she both says and decides at once.

He nods at her. "Then let's get you home."

He turns towards the vines again and wrenches the curtain open. He proffers his hand so that she might descend the stony stairs.

"My lord," she says, with a note of pardon, as though she's remembered something she should have not forgotten. "What will happen when we get there?"

Baelish blows out a breath through his lips. "Many things can happen. Who can know?" He laughs. "If we play our cards right, we may even hasten a peace."

"I do like to play cards, my lord," Sansa says, and takes his hand, and lifts her skirts so that she might not step on them. And for the first time in moons there is again a slyness in her eyes.

_- for her with him -_

As the ship sails from its secret harbor, Shae watches it, and smiles. As soon as she spied the lovers through the bowery, she was well assured.

And there it goes! Disappearing, over the horizon. Sailing towards yet another corner of the world.

Shae knows the first half of its story, and its entr'acte begins sweetly. Still. She cannot help but pray to the Gods it has a happy ending.


	2. An Obviously Sexual Voyage On the Sea

When Sansa wakes, she does not know where she is.

Her eyes skip around her, cataloguing her surroundings. She is lying in a bunked bed built into the wall. The light in the room is meager, but she can see that it comes from several small round windows, set high in its wooden walls.

Is it her imagination, or is the room rocking to and fro?

Aha! She is in the cabin of a ship – a luxury ship, from the look of it. It is narrow, as all ship's quarters tend, but lovingly made. Its paneling gleams with oil; its jointings are of polished brass.

Next to the pillow lies a damp cloth, which she suspects was laid on her forehead. For next to the bed is an empty pail with the tangy scent of sick.

That's right. She was ill last night - she remembers now. A dark figure had escorted her here, and guided her into the bed, and set the cold cloth over her eyes.

There is a rustling noise at the door.

"Who is it?" she calls, suddenly uneasy.

"It is I," says a voice, as clear as cold water. "Essis."

And who is Essis? She is a maid, of no more than eleven, with skin the color of a purple-black plum. Her long knotted braids hang nearly to her waist. She wears a white linen shift, and golden rings on almost all of her fingers and toes. A knife in a leathern scabbard hangs round her neck.

Sansa's brow furrows. "Are you…my handmaiden?"

Essis laughs. "I am here to help you, yes. But I am no servant, Sansa."

"You know my name?"

"Aye." Essis pronounces the word with a gulp. A dialect of some far-off place, one that Sansa's never heard tell of, most likely. "My father told me your name, and that you were a piteous land-loving thing. No stomach for the sea, he said, nor a sea-leg stand on, neither."

There are thumps on the ceiling overhead, and then they hear the ringing of a bell.

"Come," Essis says, and helps her to her feet. "Let's go and eat, and see if you keep anything down."

Sansa follows her out of the cabin, thinking on how quickly it's become her way, to rely on the kindness of strangers.

#

The Sossanae sit cross-legged on the deck of the _Nymph_, talking and laughing, enjoying the last of the evening's light. They pass baskets of fish and of biscuit, and high-sided tureens of coconut stew, and flagons of a dark, foul-smelling liquid that can only be drunk in the tiniest of sips.

"There are so many crew aboard," Sansa whispers to Essis, as they walk down the stairs from the deck, "and the ship is so small. Where do they all sleep?"

"Down below in the hold," Essis says, tapping her toe on the planks. "Like schools of fishes under the sea."

"All together?"

"Aye. Whyever not?"

Sansa balks for a moment, not knowing what to say. "Where I'm from, women do not lie with men who are not their husbands."

Essis makes a face - one that means "Westeros nonsense," as Sansa will soon come to know.

"Sossanae do not take husbands, nor wives," she says. "We take who we will, when we will. We are bound only to our own hearts, and to no one else, not even the lovers we beget children by."

Sansa would answer this, but she stops in her tracks. Petyr Baelish is coming out of the ship's captain's cabin, over the stern; he walks down the steps to the deck. There is a Sossana at his side, a man with an air of great authority. He has a ragged scar running from forehead to chin, but he is gentled by his eyes, large and velvety as a fawn's.

"Father," Essis greets him proudly.

"You have roused her!" the Sossana booms, looking at Sansa appraisingly. "How fares our guest?"

"My lord," Sansa says with a curtsey, and is startled when the Sossana throws his head back, roaring with laughter.

"Enough of that Westeros nonsense," he exclaims. "We have no lords here."

"Omer is captain of this fine vessel," Baelish helpfully supplies to Sansa. He has been looking at her this entire time. His voice drops, grows softer. "Are you feeling better, my lady?"

"No ladies, neither!" Omer reminds Baelish, giving him a powerful clap cross the shoulders.

"Of course not," Baelish says to Omer with a small smile. He gestures forward. "Let's dine together, my friend."

Sansa half-expects Littlefinger to offer her his arm, to guide her to her place at the feast, wherever it may be. But he brushes past her with Omer, and they settle together somewhere near the center of the circle. They take flagons, toast each other, and drink, and seem to pay no further mind to the girls.

Reluctantly, Sansa sits down by Essis, and looks across the deck at him. He is not wearing his usual garb – his long, fitted cloaks of brocade, jodpurs, and high-heeled leather boots. He wears a loose tunic in soft gray silk, knee-length breeches of the same. No shoes. His legs are as thin as a bird's.

Essis eyes Baelish, curious. "He brought you aboard," she says, taking a biscuit from a basket, and passing it on to Sansa. "Is he your father?"

"No." Sansa takes a biscuit, too, and nibbles on its ragged edge.

"Your lover, then?" Essis guesses.

"Why would you think that?" Sansa asks, as her cheeks both color.

Essis shrugs. "My mother took a Westerosi with silverish hair, once. But she did not keep him long, for he would not live at sea." She takes a bite of biscuit. "He must be your lover, or either your bloodkin," she says through the biscuit.

Sansa decides to skirt the question yet again. "He is…he is my protector."

Essis spits through her side teeth onto the deck, as if this idea warrants contempt. "Can your own people not protect you?" she wants to know.

"They are too far away."

"Can you not protect yourself, then?"

"I wish I could," Sansa says, feeling very humble. "But I cannot swing a sword at those who would hurt me. Nor sail a ship away from them."

"Well," Essis says. "Perhaps you can find another way one day." She dips the biscuit into the stew, scoops it up, and eats it greedily.

"I hope to," Sansa says, and watches Petyr Baelish.

After the meal is over, the Sossanae lie on the deck and softly chatter with each other. One plucks a berembao; another claps his hands and sings. A group of children play at jax, even though the lilting ship often sends the pieces skittering away.

A woman with a dancer's gait walks across the deck, hips swaying like a pendulum. She goes to Baelish, takes him by both hands, and says something Sansa cannot hear.

Baelish clears his throat, and says something that Sansa can hear, but cannot understand. For he speaks in Sossanis, and Sossanis is all clicks and gasps and whistles.

Omer laughs, slaps the woman on her thigh, and gestures her away, clicking and gasping and whistling all the while.

"What was _that_?" Sansa asks.

"I thought you said he wasn't your lover," Essis says, somewhat mean-spiritedly.

"Wha – " She falters mid-word. "Please, Essis, tell me what happened. Who was that woman?"

"That is my eldest sister, Rizza," Essis says. "She would have taken your lover and lain with him, but he told her his heart had bound him to another."

Sansa cannot speak. What is this roiling emotion inside of her? She would know, for it cannot be jealousy.

"It's the standard reply," Essis says with a shrug. "If your answer's 'no.'"

"What did your father say?"

Essis blows a strawberry. "He told her, 'get on, girl. You know the Westerosi are modest as mice.'"

"Rizza's just like him," she adds, again aloof. "They're both always hankering for somebody new."

Sansa sits still for a moment, contemplating the Sossanae and their strange ways. And, when she fails at that, she contemplates her Westerosi self, and has no success there, either. For when she looks across the deck and sees Rizza, lovely as a willow on a riverbank, and thinks that Petyr Baelish denied her for her sake - something swells in her, and it is not pride of beauty. No. It is something else entirely.

#

She is undressing for bed, and a memory will not leave her mind. It was the last time she saw her mother, the night before she and Arya left Winterfell for King's Landing. Catelyn had sat them down in her bedroom, very seriously, and said that she must have a word with both of them.

They'd thought they were in trouble, but it'd turned out to be far worse.

_"I cannot send you South without a due warning," she says. "King's Landing is different from Winterfell, and filled with perils, especially for maidens. You must never find yourself alone with any man who isn't bloodkin. You must not let him kiss you – not beyond a brush of the lips. You must not let him touch you, either over or under your dress. And, finally, you must _not_ let him lie on top of you, whatever else you might do."_

_Gods, this is confusing._

_"Why on earth would he want to lie on top of me?" Sansa wants to know._

_"It's how babies are made," Arya says._

_Sansa turns to look at her, shocked._

_"What?" Arya says. "I've seen the pigs and dogs do it."_

_"That's disgusting. Mother, tell her it's not the same with people."_

_Catelyn coughs._

_"It's the same with all beasts," Arya says, like the little know-it-all she is. "The boy's thingie gets stiff and he pokes the girl in the bum with it."_

_"Arya!" Sansa squawks, and turns to her mother to save her._

_"Arya," Catelyn says, reprimand in her tone._

_"Well, you don't have to worry about me, Mother," Arya declares. "I'll stab any man who tries to lay me down."_

_"As if any man would want to!" Sansa snaps at her sister, still embarrassed by her own inferior knowledge._

_"Girls." Catelyn's voice is steely again. "I'm telling you these things because they're important. No matter how strongly you may feel for a man, you must grant him no liberties that are reserved for your husband."_

_"Did you ever, Mother?" Arya asks, curious. She is always eager to hear about anyone breaking the rules, especially rules that are currently being impressed upon her._

_Catelyn barely, just barely, blushes. "When I was a girl – even younger than you, Sansa - I played at kissing with a ward of my father's."_

_"You kissed a man who wasn't Father?" Sansa is scandalized._

_"A _boy_," Catelyn corrects. "But yes. I thought it harmless. We all did. And yet it brought great sorrow to our house."_

_"What happened?"_

_"He had no name, you see. And his family's holdings were a little more than nothing. So when he said he loved me and would marry me, my father laughed in his face."_

_Catelyn purses her lips, considering how much of this story to tell._

_"But my sister loved him well," she says, skipping a chapter ahead, "and one night she crept into his chambers, secretly, and gave to him her maidenhead."_

_"Does that mean he lied down on top of her?" Arya asks._

_"_Lay_ down," Catelyn corrects. "Yes, Arya, I suppose it does." A twinge of distaste passes over her face._

_"And then, a few months later – " She pauses, decides to skip another chapter. "She could not marry him, you see. He was too lowborn for her. And with her virtue compromised, Father was hard put to find her a husband."_

_"But she… did find one?" Sansa asks, alarmed by the alternative, even though she knows well that her aunt Lysa was married to the late Hand of the King._

_"Yes. An older, colder man than she'd wished for, I'll warrant."_

_"Whatever happened to your father's ward?" Ayra wants to know._

_"Oh, I'm sure he's done well enough for himself, in spite of everything. These things don't damage men's reputations the way they do ours."_

_Arya frowns. "Why not?"_

_"Oh, Arya, I don't know," her mother says, impatient. "It's just the way it is."_

_"But that's not fair."_

_Catelyn doesn't even shrug. "No one ever said it was."_

"Hey-ho," Essis sighs, interrupting Sansa's pondering. "I'm to bunk with you again, Westeros. Shove over." She wedges herself into the bed, without waiting for Sansa to move.

"Why are you here? Wouldn't you rather be in the hold with the others?"

"I'd rather be at the watch at the top of the masthead," Essis answers, as though that were something that went without saying. "But Father says I must stay with you, to make sure you don't fret overmuch, when you remember there's no dry land at your feet. G'night." And she blows out the candle.

#

Days go by – days that seem like weeks, for the wind blows not, and the sails hang slack, and the Sossanae are all as cross as hatchets. Yet Petyr Baelish barely speaks to Sansa. He sleeps until late in the day, in a hammock in the hold, and comes out on deck only to sun and to sup. Evenings, he retreats to the captain's cabin, where he and Omer sit at table, drinking prodigious quantities of wine, and tell their stories in the way that only men who've come from nothing can. Now and again, they point at places on maps whose curled edges they pin down to the table with the many bottles they've emptied. Then they laugh, and drink some more, and tell more stories yet.

Sansa strolls the deck, nights, and purports to look on the stars. But in truth she watches Petyr though the cabin's round window, and waits for him to look out at her.

He doesn't.

Did she imagine that he kissed her as the sun set over the sea, as flower petals fell down from the sky like rain?

She would play coy as ladies do, but she has no notion how to, not with a man so inscrutable.

What does he want of her? Does he want anything?

#

Sansa bounces the ball and snatches at jax, and succeeds at five on her first pass.

"Five!" she declares, and looks up, expectant. "_Essis_," she prods.

Essis shakes herself. "Sorry," she says, without sounding sorry. She is listening to a woman who stands in the center of the Sossanae, reciting a long poem. It sounds like the beating of myriad drums.

"Tell me what she says," Sansa asks for the third time, but Essis only shakes her head.

"Sossanis poetry cannot be translated."

"Well, what's it about, then?"

Essis's eyes are far-away again; the woman's tale has ravished her. "Dragons."

"But there are no more dragons."

Essis makes a noise through her nose. "Not in Westeros, perhaps."

Suddenly, synchronously, all of the Sossanae raise their heads, as if they're heard something that Sansa cannot. They whoop and leap to their feet.

"What is it?" Sansa asks, and then it hits her body like a slap. If she were still wearing her Westerosi dress, she would have been blown into the sea. For it is a gale, a southerly, the mightiest of sea-winds, and the only thing more cherished by the Sossanae than their poetry.

Omer jogs by and touches Essis on the shoulder, and clicks his tongue, and she looks up at him with eyes like stars, and beams.

"My father's given me the watch," she booms to Sansa, exultant, "from now until the dawn!"

Sansa looks up at the main masthead. It is a dizzying height.

"You're going to stay up there all night?" she asks, incredulous.

"Aye!" Essis throws over her shoulder; she is already halfway to the mast.

"Won't you be cold?"

Essis laughs. "Nay," she yells, setting both hands on the ropes. "For I am Sossana! The ship beneath me is my blood, its sails my heart, and the wind my lover!"

She clambers up the rigging, quick as anything, until she reaches the top, and swings herself into the lookout at the top of the mast.

The other Sossanae are scattering all over the ship. They climb the masts, tie and untie knots, draw down sails, turn the rudders. Everyone has a job to do.

Sansa rubs her bare shoulders to dull the bite of the wind, and tries not to feel so lonely, and boring.

"She brings to mind your sister, doesn't she?"

It is Petyr Baelish. He is standing behind her, looking up at Essis on the topmast. It is the first full sentence he has spoken to Sansa since the first evening she stepped onto the deck.

Sansa turns away without answering him. She is quaking in the wind, though she wishes she weren't. It makes her feel weak.

Baelish unbuckles his cloak and makes to set it over her shoulders, but she stalks past him, eyes cold, and heads straight to her cabin, leaving the jax behind.

#

When she hears him come in and pull the door to, her heart flounders in her chest.

"My lady Sansa, I gather you're angry at me," Baelish says.

"Why would I be angry?" she answers, her tone as bland as porridge. "I am grateful to Lord Baelish for escorting me from King's Landing, and granting me safe passage home."

"Enough of that court talk," he tells her. "We're not in King's Landing, not anymore."

"I apologize if I've spoken rudely, my lord," Sansa says, with the slightest of curtseys. "I'm afraid that our customs are different up North. I do hope my breaches of etiquette will be met with indulgence."

"_Enough_," he says.

Sansa lifts her gaze to his. "I have been waiting five days for you to speak to me again," she says, hardly daring to believe her own nerve. "What have I done to you to warrant such..._coldness_?"

Baelish stares at her for a moment, then a strange glimmer appears in his eye.

"Have I been neglecting you, little bird?" he says, as a smile spreads across his face. "Did you want me to sit with you and Essis on deck, and tell tales of knights and ladies? Or perhaps play at jax, or braid hair?"

Sansa closes and opens her eyes, to slick away burgeoning tears.

"I know I am young, and ignorant, but I am not stupid," she says, her voice tremulous. "Please don't make fun of me, Lord Baelish."

The soft way she says the words nearly destroys him.

"You kissed me, before we boarded the ship," she whispers. "Why?"

_"Why?"_ he repeats. "There was no _why_." He looks away; his voice drops to nearly a mutter. "Only a man who was foolish, and forgot himself."

Sansa doesn't speak. She is suddenly, viciously angry. At her father, for taking her to King's Landing in the first place. At her mother, for letting her go. At her septa, for telling her stories of the handsome prince she would one day meet and marry and love. At Joffrey, for taking that story, and everything it promised, and turning it to...turning it to _shit_.

And at Shae, for convincing her to open her heart to the man who stands before her. And at the man who stands before her, himself - for kissing her, and then ignoring her. For sending her head spinning, until she does not know what she wants from him, or why.

"Sansa." Baelish sighs. "We'll reach the Fingers in another day. One day more, and we'll be off again, down the river to Riverrun. There I will deliver you to your mother and your brother, and then I'll be on my way."

He takes a step closer to her. She can feel the warmth of his skin through the thin silk of his clothes.

"What would you have me do in the meantime?" he says, his voice low again. "Romance you?" He takes a lock of her hair and rolls it between his fingers. "Charm you? Try to make you love me?"

Sansa swallows.

"I once loved a lass of high birth," he says, "so I _know_. There can never be anything between us."

"There was a kiss, once," she says, as though she would spar with him.

He smiles, sadly. "You're still of an age that believes that a kiss has the power to change your whole life."

"Doesn't it?"

He raises his hand, touches her neck. The tip of his finger glides down the seam at the back of her ear.

Sansa shivers and sighs, startled by the power of this solitary touch.

"Gods, you are lovely," he says, surrendering.

Sansa has never embraced a man before, not one who wasn't bloodkin. Her father's body was bulky and padded, and thick with muscle underneath. She remembers the feel of it well, from the times he would return home from riding, smelling of leather and horse-sweat, and greet her with a one-armed clasp against his side. Jon and Robb were thin and knobby and coltish when they were boys, when they were yet young enough to wrestle her for the toys and sweetmeats she was supposed to share with them, but didn't.

Petyr Baelish is all sinew and wire, muscle and bone, without any superfluous flesh. He feels as keen and as dangerous as a drawn knife.

Her hands touch down on his shoulder blades, and then over top of his shoulders, and then down again, to the small of his back, covertly exploring his body. They finally come around his chest and settle on his collarbones. She tests their sharpness against her fingertips. It is a defensive gesture disguised as a caress. Or is it the other way around?

Sansa doesn't know. She is terrified; she is terribly excited. One magnifies the other, until she doesn't know which she wants, to push him away, or – _oh_. No. She shouldn't want that.

But he is kissing her now – feverishly, with his mouth open, his tongue burning against hers - and kissing is – Gods, kissing is _glorious_; why didn't anyone ever tell her how glorious it would be! He breaks into her, rolls, retreats, and breaks again, as the sea breaks, rolls, retreats and breaks against the shore. She yields to him, and yields to him yet more, but even now, locked together as they are, she is frustrated. She feels she cannot yield enough.

His hand presses into her side, into the spot where her waist is the narrowest. It is not a gentle caress; it is so forceful it almost pains her. Yet there is pleasure in it, too. She thinks she might like him to press her even harder.

Then he takes two steps forward, and she matches him with two steps back, without even thinking, as though they were merely dancing. That is before she realizes that he is laying her down on the bed.

_You must_ not _let him lie down on top of you, whatever you else may do_, her mother's voice rings in her ears.

But he is on top of her now - or halfway so, at least - and his hand is staggering down her side, up her shift and around, to clutch the place where her thigh meets the curve of her backside. It is a rough, proprietary grab. His fingers press into her flesh, dangerously close to her sex.

Then his leg is sliding between her legs, pushing them apart, and though she knows next to nothing of men, Sansa knows enough to know what this means.

She must stop him, and so she does, with a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sob. The heels of her hands dig into his chest, cordoning him from her body.

Petyr looks down at her. He seems only half-surprised.

"What is it, little sparrow?" he would know.

Sansa is far too abashed to answer. Her face searches his for understanding, or, failing that, sympathy.

"Ah," he exhales, realizing her meaning. "You're worried that…I might take certain liberties? Ones that, properly speaking, belong only to a husband?"

Sansa flushes, feeling exponentially stupid. She opens her mouth, but Petyr shushes her before she can speak.

"No, my dove," he says, very gently. "You needn't fear. I won't take your maidenhead."

He trails his finger down her bodice, begins to pluck apart its knotted strings. "But…if you want…" he offers, trailing off.

His hand nudges aside the fabric covering her chest. It cups her breast, thumb circling over her nipple, and Sansa lets out a soft, involuntary moan.

"…there are other things we can do," he whispers.


	3. In Which Baelish's Motives Grow Murkier

Robb Stark sits on a makeshift throne in the great hall of Riverrun, head aching nigh to splitting. _Gods, was there ever a King whose court was such bedlam?_ he wonders. If there were, his history was missing from Mayster Luwin's old books.

Jaime Lannister is kneeling on the stone floor before him. He would be bound by the hands were he not minus a hand, thereby rendering it pointless. He is flanked by the largest woman Robb's ever seen, who stands there sullenly, staring him down as though he were the Kingslayer and not the King. Karstark is bellowing for justice, so loudly he cannot think clearly, and the small lords are talking in each other's ears.

For some reason it is this breach of protocol that sends him right over the edge.

"Enough!" he bellows at his bannermen.

And, at the very moment when silence falls over the court, when it seems that the proceedings might not be degrading to chaos after all, the heavy iron-laced doors are flung open, and a guard escorts two people into the room, a man with gray wings at his temples and a tall woman wearing a hood.

He does not recognize either of them, at least, not until the woman slides the hood off her head with her fingertips, revealing her auburn hair.

The king gapes.

"Sansa." He almost chokes on the name.

Sansa's face cracks, and then she is running towards him, parting the crowd like a scissor parts cloth.

And then he is holding out his arms, and she is falling into them.

She sobs into his shoulder – messily, noisily. She clutches his fur capelet in her fists.

Robb's eyes are stricken and wide. For a moment, his hand hovers in the air above Sansa's back. Then he touches it down on the back of her head, and strokes her hair, again and again, as though he were testing its texture, as though he were making sure she was real. And then, having confirmed it as truth - yes, his sister is alive, she is _here_ - tears break and fall from King of the North's eyes.

"O Gods," he rasps, his voice thick in his throat, and rocks Sansa back and forth in his arms. "O Gods, thank you, thank you, thank you. O Gods old and new, thank you for my sister."

The lords are still stunned to silence, even Karstark. It is a moment of greater reverence than a ceremony of the Seven.

The King speaks other sentences, of course. "Bring my mother now, quickly," to a page, and "Who is this man?" in regards to Lord Baelish. But years from now, this sentence, this moment, is the only one Sansa remembers.

#

The unexpected arrival of not one, but two, royal hostages is enough to adjourn the king's court for the day. Instead, there is a smaller, more informal gathering, though it is made somewhat more formal by the fact that it is the first time three Starks have sat together for over a year.

Robb brings a woman whom Sansa doesn't know, and whom he introduces as his queen, to her great surprise. Talisa of Somewhere-Far-Away smiles and tells Sansa how lovely she is, how happy she is to see her. But there is a coldness between her and Catelyn that even Sansa shivers at, and she leaves after saying that a horse's groom has a broken hand, an excuse that makes no sense to Sansa at all.

After the first series of embraces, and the second, and the third, Robb calls for refreshment. The Starks sit by the fireplace together, and they try to eat. To Sansa's relief, no mention is made of how poor Riverrun rations must seem to her, in comparison with the figs and apricots and cheeses and cakes of King's Landing that she has been eating for months.

The silence is at first comforting, then discomforting. All she wants to do is to sink into her mother's arms, to be rocked back and forth like a babe, too young for words. For she knows the sorts of words that are yet to be spoken – questions, from her mother and brother, and answers, from herself – and she dreads them all.

When Catelyn opens her mouth, Sansa cuts her off.

"Can we not speak of it?" she asks them, nervously. "Of anything? Can we just…be together, for now?"

Catelyn touches her hair. "Of course we can, dearest." Setting her arm over her daughter's shoulder, she passes her a mug of mulled wine.

Sansa leans into her mother's half-embrace. She lifts the mug to her lips gratefully, even though the memories of the last twelvemonth are far too vivid to be dulled by anything so weak as wine.

Her father's head on a spike. Joffrey sniggering on his throne, as his men strip her body half-bare. The tense atmosphere of the keep as the Battle of Blackwater rages outside, the frightened eyes of the women, the callous drunkenness of Queen Cersei.

She doesn't want to speak about it, doesn't want to be asked. But for some reason she can't entirely explain, she dreads being asked about Petyr Baelish most of all.

She remembers the tips of his fingers, ghosting down over the bare skin of her shoulders and arms. His hands sliding down over her hands, his fingers lacing into hers. She remembers letting herself sink back into him, her head lolling onto his shoulder. A ghost kiss, on her neck below the ear. Then he fades away, like a dream upon waking, and she is a girl again, a mere babe, too young for words, in her mother's arms.

#

They meet again the next day, to break their fasts together. Talisa sits across from Sansa, at Robb's right hand. Sansa is studying Talisa, how she cuts her meat in the odd manner of Volantis, when Petyr Baelish arrives to join them.

She pretends that there is a piece of food stuck in her throat, so that she might have an excuse to cough, and cover her sudden coloring.

"I trust you slept well, Lord Baelish," Robb says, as the other man sits down at the foot of the table, several feet from the nearest Stark. His voice carries no tone of surprise. He has plainly invited Baelish here, wanting to speak to him in a less formal setting than the great hall.

"Would you know the butler put me in the very room I slept in as your grandfather's ward? Still a drafty old garret, I'm afraid." Baelish, too, is less formal than he was yesterday, but for different reasons. He has been reminded that Riverrun was once his home.

"I suppose we should have kept you in the master chamber, considering the courtesy you've done us." There is a note of distaste in Robb's tone.

"Is it my imagination, or are you a touch colder than you were yesterday, Your Grace?" Baelish asks, as he airs his napkin over his lap. "I would have thought the return of your sister might have lifted your spirits."

"I am merely curious as to your motivations, Lord Baelish."

"In my experience, when it comes to escorting a royal hostage through enemy territory, there's only one great motivating force." His voice is very dry.

"On whose orders did you bring her here, then?"

"Well, I wouldn't call them orders, not exactly," Baelish says, and plucks a sweetbread from a basket. "He's certainly in no position to give orders, not anymore."

"Who?"

"Tyrion Lannister." He bites into the bread.

Catelyn looks disgusted. "Is that the name you fling out every time someone asks you who's behind a plot?"

"I assure you it's quite true, Cat."

She returns a look that says his assurance means nothing.

"Did you think the news that you sent his brother back to King's Landing didn't reach the capital? This is a token of his agreement to your bargain." Baelish sighs. "Believe me or don't, it's your choice. Either way, your daughter is still here, and not in King's Landing."

"_One_ of my daughters is here," Catelyn says. "Where is the other?"

"The Lannisters have no idea where Arya is."

There is an almost palpable surge of despair in the room.

"But, as for me," Baelish says, very slyly, "the last I saw her was at Harrenhall."

"That is a lie," Robb says. "Harrenhall was riddled with corpses."

"Well, if you didn't find Arya's there, I'll wager she's yet alive. She has quite the talent for the improvisation, that one." There is obvious admiration in Baelish's tone. "When I saw her, she was disguised as a boy, the cupbearer to Lord Tywin himself. She poured me a flagon of wine, and spilled it, trying to hide her face from me. And before you accuse me of lying again, you must ask yourself why I would come up with something as farfetched as this, were it not the truth."

Robb and Catelyn look at each other, then away from each other, quickly. They are trying to disguise their springing hope.

"When was this?" Robb says, and Baelish tells him. It is recent enough that the sending out of search parties isn't entirely unwarranted, and there is a pause in the proceedings while the King of the North sends word to the Mayster of Riverrun to let fly ravens to his other posts in the Riverlands.

"I am quite sure that Lord Tyrion would have given you Arya, too, had he had the opportunity," Baelish says, and looks at Catelyn. "And think, after _you_ would have had your sister execute him! You must admire the man's courtesy."

"Lord Baelish, would you please excuse us for the time being," Robb says. "Our family has much to discuss. I'm sure you understand."

Baelish smiles, bows and takes his leave, sweetbread in hand. He does not look at Sansa, not once. This lacerates her heart.

She rebukes herself, leaving a second laceration, this one on her pride.

"Is it true what he says?" Robb asks his sister. "Was it Tyrion Lannister gave the word to send you here?"

"I don't know, Your Grace," Sansa says, quite truthfully. "I was not told the intricacies of the plot to remove me. But…Lord Tyrion was always very kind to me."

"You needn't call me Your Grace when we are alone, Sansa," Robb says, reaching over the table to give her hand a clasp.

"Robb…" Catelyn says, and hesitates. "I believe that Tyrion Lannister is capable of acting in good faith."

"As do I," Robb says, without hesitating. "But that doesn't mean he's behind this. There's something so odd about the whole thing, I can't help thinking it's a trap."

"I don't think it's a trap," Sansa says, very earnestly. "I think you should send him back to his family - Ser Jaime, I mean."

"You are tenderhearted, sister," the King says, with no little tenderness of his own. "But Jaime Lannister is a soldier, a military leader. How can I in good conscience let him go? I must do everything I can to protect the men who serve in my armies, mustn't I?"

Sansa is quiet for a few seconds before she speaks.

"I know I am young, brother," she says, "and I know little of armies and war. But I know what it is, to be stranded among strangers, to be starved for the sight of a kind face. Some might call death a softer fate."

"It's not as though he'll be leading a Lannister army against you, not without a hand to swing a sword with," Catelyn says. "And if Arya is discovered by their soldiers and not ours, perhaps our courtesy might be remembered."

Sansa's plea was the prettier one, but Catelyn's is the point that goes home.

"Karstark won't like it," Robb says.

"Karstark is your bannerman. You are his king," Talisa says. It is the first time she has spoken since Lord Baelish came into the room.

"It's settled, then," Robb says. "I'll send him back, on the condition that he swear the Starks are not to blame for the loss of his hand."

"And what of Petyr Baelish?" Catelyn asks, a strange edge to her voice.

"Lord Baelish was always very kind to me, as well," Sansa says. She is seeking to remove some of her mother and brother's distaste for the man, distaste she can still feel, even though he's left the room.

"Did he speak of the Lannisters to you?" Robb asks. "Of their intentions?"

"That's not the sort of thing we talked about," Sansa says, and then realizes this answer only prompts more questions. "We…we barely spoke to each other," she adds, coloring again, "not beyond formalities."

This statement is not exactly true, though it is true Sansa knows next to nothing of Petyr Baelish in regards to the Lannisters. She is only now starting to realize that she knows very little of Petyr Baelish in general, even after the fortnight they spent together. Only a handful of times did he speak to her in a way that seemed unstudied, spontaneous, making remarks on her grace, her beauty, the way the light played on her hair. These remarks Sansa snatched at and carefully stored in her memory, like the ragpickers in Fleabottom saved scraps of cloth to sell on market-days.

Of his body she can only guess. He kept it as hidden as he kept his thoughts. What she knows of him is heat, and pressure, and his hands and mouth, and even those are obscured by darkness. For whenever it became clear that he meant to touch her, she shut her eyes - first out of embarrassment, at how foolish and uncouth she felt, and later of shame, at how readily she gave herself over to him, night after night, even though the morning before she told herself she wouldn't, not again. But whenever she was near him her body began to speak, and when he touched her it began to sing - until its myriad clamoring small voices drowned out her misgivings, one by one. Until everything coalesced into one glorious deafening musical chord, and she was singing, too, then, and shattering like a pane of glass.

She is still trying to piece herself back together again, into the Sansa Stark her mother and brother knew and loved, but she cannot seem to do it. Either some pieces are missing, or extra. She isn't sure which.

"We ought to be keeping him in the dungeon next to the Kingslayer, not in the northwest tower," Caitlin says, unable to hide her animosity any longer.

"What? No!" Sansa cries.

"Sansa, dearest, I realize you must think he's your friend, but Lord Baelish is no honorable man. And I daresay he wasn't guiltless in the death of your father."

"Joffrey is the one who killed Father," Sansa says. "And Petyr brought me here, at great danger to himself."

"What danger did he face, exactly?" Robb says, almost laughing.

"The Lannisters," Sansa says, her mouth stumbling over the words. "Joffrey, I mean, and Lord Tywin. They had no idea of it. They would have executed him for treason had they known of his plan."

"You think he did this of his own volition?" Robb is not convinced.

"He's capable of anything, if he spies some advantage for himself," Catelyn says with great spite.

"Doesn't Lord Baelish serve the Lannisters?" Talisa asks, with the humble air of one who isn't caught up on the politics just yet.

"Petyr Baelish serves no one, with the exception of himself," Catelyn says, almost spits. "I don't believe he cares for the Lannisters any more than he does you."

"Does he care for his own head?" the King would know. "No man would undergo an exchange of hostages during wartime without the King or the King's Hand's explicit permission. The idea is ludricrous."

"But we left suddenly, and in such secrecy." Sansa's protests sound pathetic, girlish, even to herself.

"No," Robb says, still unwilling to indulge this idea. "He must have done this on Tywin Lannister's bidding. Why else would he have?"

His eyes light down on Sansa's face, searching for an answer that he doesn't expect to find. But when she turns her eyes to the ground, Robb's expression transforms.

He glances at Catelyn to see if his suspicion is shared, and she almost imperceptibly, shakes her head at him, as if to say, _Not now._

"Forgive me, sister," Robb says, a tad too gruffly. "I have been interrogating you. You should rest before we meet again, for I too am wearied of untangling things today."

Sansa bows her head. "May I leave? I am not hungry anymore."

"Of course," Robb says.

As soon as she is gone, the King looks at his mother.

"I want her examined," he says. Quietly, urgently.

"Robb." It is a soft plea.

"I wish it didn't matter," Robb says, almost angrily. "I wish the only thing that mattered were that she's here with us."

There is a pause.

"See to it," he says.

"Let me follow her," Talisa says, touching Robb's shoulder. "Perhaps I can find out something."

#

When Talisa rounds the corner, she sees them there, speaking together in low voices. They are standing several feet from each other, but this does not hide the tenor of their conversation. If Sansa's eyes were hands, they would be touching Petyr Baelish's face.

Baelish doesn't look at Talisa, though he must have heard her footsteps. He merely bows his head at Sansa, says a word of farewell, and continues on his way towards the dungeons.

Sansa looks at Talisa. "Lord Baelish was giving me directions back to my chamber." She gives a laugh. "Riverrun is much bigger than Winterfell, and he knows all its passages."

It is a clumsy lie, but Talisa lets her have it, for now. She will speak to Catelyn later.

#

"Well, fancy seeing you here, of all places," Jaime Lannister says to Baelish through the bars. He is sitting in a pile of straw, but at least it is a clean one.

"You'll see me in King's Landing, next," Baelish answers cheerfully. "I think you just might be free soon, Lord Lannister."

"Then you just might have done me a favor, Lord Baelish. And you know what they say about Lannisters and debts."

Baelish inclines his head. "I am honored if my services have been to your benefit."

"You know, I never thought much of you before," Jaime says, with a reflective air. "I never thought about you at all, really. And something tells me that's precisely how you wanted it."

Baelish's only answer is a sly smile.

"I do have one question. Did my brother _really_ know you were bringing the Stark girl here?"

"It is not, strictly speaking, an impossibility."

"So you did do this on your own." Jaime shakes his head and laughs. "Of all the mad gambles I've ever heard of, this is the maddest of all."

"Perhaps," Littlefinger concedes. "Yet it seems I've rolled a lucky seven. Two mighty families at war with each other, and both of them now in my debt."

"That Sansa Stark's a pretty little maid. Tell me. Did you manage to keep _your _little fingers out of her honey pot? Or could you not help a taste or two?"

Baelish's smile never falters. "I can assure you I'm no fool, my lord."

"No. But you are an opportunist."

#

It is nigh to sunset when Catelyn spots him, strolling along the riverbank, through the rolling woods of the castle grounds.

"I thought I might find you here," she says as she approaches, stepping down a steep incline to a better foothold.

"I couldn't stay away," he says, without turning around. "These woods bring back so many cherished memories."

They are speaking as though they were friends, though of course they are not.

"We played together so happily as children, Cat," Petyr says with a sigh. "It's a pity we find ourselves standing on different sides now."

"You are standing on the line between sides," Catelyn says. There is again an edge to her tone. "It's not quite the same thing."

He lifts his arm to point at the riverbank.

"Do you remember the oak tree that used to stand there? The one as big around as a castle turret?"

"Petyr." It is a protest, a warning.

"How old were we then?" he asks, with put-on geniality. "As old as Sansa is now?"

Catelyn's mouth is a thin brittle line.

"You were wearing that dress. The low-cut one, with flowers around the neckline. You mocked me, for I could not stop staring. Then you sat on my lap and kissed me - teasing kisses, _pecks_, really, with no real passion in them - and squirmed against me. And when I came in my trousers, you _laughed._"

"I am sorry for it."

"You are now. You weren't then."

"I was embarrassed!" she insists, in a tone of voice that suggests that she thinks that he's making too much of this. "You forget - I was very young. I didn't know what I was playing at with you."

"You were a cat, Cat. And I was the ball of yarn you sharpened your claws upon."

He makes to walk away.

"Petyr." Her hand grips the back of his arm, just above the elbow.

He looks at her.

"I need to know," she says. "I need to know if you touched her."

He makes a noise that's like a laugh, but isn't. His face would seem insouciant, if she didn't know him so well. "You needn't worry," he says. "The girl still has her little flower."

There is relief on her face, swiftly followed by suspicion. "That is not all I asked you."

"No. But it's all that matters."

She shoots him one last pleading stare.

_I had her on her back, Cat, _he wants to say._ I was teasing her with my fingers and my tongue, and she called me by my name, and begged me to make her come. She didn't even know what she was asking for, the sweet little thing. She only knew how much she wanted it. "Petyr,_ please_," she cried._

_And after I did what she wanted, after she'd taken her pleasure of me and her body was slackened and spent, her head fell back on her pillow. And just before she remembered herself, remembered that she was a Stark, she _laughed_. It was laugh of pure innocence, of pure carnal joy. Gods, it was like music._

But he holds his tongue. He looks at Catelyn and smirks, and barely, just barely shakes his head. It doesn't mean "no," and he knows that she knows that it doesn't. It simply means that he won't answer her. He won't even deign to lie.


End file.
